Posts Tagged "math"

It is well-known that there is a major gap in our STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education pipeline and that nearly 40% of companies report difficulty in filling positions because of a lack of STEM skills*. With the ever increasing demand for STEM skills, it is imperative that we spark a love of STEM education in our students early-on. Fostering interest in STEM related subjects at an early age encourages students to explore these types of careers as they progress through school. The best and most effective way of getting our students interested in STEM is through real world, hands-on learning.

This week we are featuring StemBox, “a subscription box that makes real science accessible to young girls and empowers them as young scientists”. StemBox sends out boxes full of all the necessary equipment to conduct real-world science experiments. “Each box contains sophisticated labware and reagents for the science experiment, a protocol, fun science accessories, and a link to our corresponding videos. Our educational videos feature in-depth explanation from a real female role model working in that box’s field.” On the StemBox Kickstarter page you can view their “Strawberry DNA Extraction Box” and the “Owl Pellet Dissection Box”, both of these boxes encourage young girls to get out and explore the world around them. We also see that there is a future engineering kit in the works!

It has been proven that students learn more and retain information when they are able to participate in activities. Having these StemBoxes tailor-made for age level and interests is a fantastic way to make subjects come alive for students.

Here at 3D Innovations we are big proponents of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education. We understand the importance of STEM subjects and the need to encourage more students to enter STEM fields after college. On Kickstarter we recently came across a product, Coordimate, that will take some of the “grunt work” out of math, economics and engineering classes. This ingenious product quickly and accurate prints out a Cartesian graph so you can spend more time solving the problem and less time worrying about the design of your graph. We all know how critical accuracy can be when solving math equations and the Coordimate would be a great companion to have to ensure the most accurate answer. This product would be fantastic for middle school students and all the way up to graduate students.

“I wanted to create a tool that could produce a Cartesian graph with the push of a button, as an alternative to redrawing it over and over again.” Five prototypes later and the Coordimate is now ready for production.

Just in time for the holiday season! Ingocraft is modernizing the world of traditional construction sets for children by incorporating 3D modeling and allowing families to 3D print customized pieces for the kit. As an engineering firm we understand the importance of engaging children at a young age by making learning fun and interactive. This kit not only makes learning fun but, it challenges children to learn new skills and use their imagination to create truly customized construction pieces for their personal kit.

“Ingocraft is a holistic approach to modern design/build, but for kids! Modern tech meets nuts and bolts, a combination to inspire and educate young people to be makers, inventors, creators, and future 3D printers.”

This kit would be great for family use or in the classroom. The introduction to 3D design and 3D printing are invaluable skills and the hands on approach is sure to excite and engage children.

Many of us have children that are beyond excited to dress up tomorrow in their Halloween costume and head door-to-door for some candy treats. Instead of letting them devour all of that candy, you can now help them turn some of it into a fun learning opportunity.

This Buzzfeed article, 19 Spooky STEM Projects For Kiddos This Halloween, has wonderful suggestions on how to incorporate science, technology, engineering and math into Halloween. These projects are not only creative and educational but they would be great to do at home or even as a classroom lesson.

Have a wonderful Halloween!

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3D Innovations is a full service 3D Engineering/Design company – from the 3D Design to a fully functional 3D Prototype & Product.

BlocksCAD is a “Kickstarter Staff Pick” and we can see why… This open-sourced 3D CAD program for students is a quick, easy and intuitive STEM education tool. As an engineering firm we understand the importance of teaching children the fundamentals early in order to pique their interest during formative years. BlocksCAD gives elementary school students the ability to dream up an object, model it and then print it on a 3D printer… Making the product design process fun and interactive!

What is BlocksCAD? “Imagine a drag-and-drop 3D Computer Aided Design and modeling tool designed for use by elementary-age children. Then give it the features, flexibility, and power of a professional-level program. That tool is BlocksCAD and it’s in use here at Einstein’s Workshop, a hands-on learning center and kids makerspace in the Boston area. With this tool, we’ve had enormous success teaching 3D design to children as young as 8. The interface is easy for developing minds to grasp, with interlocking blocks and sliders, simple shapes, and quick visual 3D feedback.”

**This Kickstarter campaign ends on October 4th and needs help reaching their funding goal.**

*If you would like to submit a product to be considered for our ‘Product of the Week’ post please e-mail us at info@3d-innovations.com with an image and/or website link and a product description. Thank you!

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3D Innovations is a full service 3D Engineering/Design company – from the 3D Design to a fully functional 3D Prototype & Product.

ITSPHUN, is an acronym for Interlocking Triangles Squares Pentagons and Hexagons Using Notches and promises a lot of fun. This product is a geometric construction kit for math education and creative play. ITSPHUN teaches children mathematical concepts in a creative, visually inspiring and intuitive manner.

“The constructs are eye catching and decorative and the open-ended system will keep everybody interested for a long time. The geometric construction ideas included in each kit can serve as inspiration and challenge but you will have fun building your own, unique structures. Just by playing, you will discover symmetry rules, recognize and follow given patterns and invent new ones.”

Here are 3D Innovations we are always interested in products that make STEM education more interactive and engaging for children and ITSPHUN seems to do just that. It can be challenging for teachers and parents to bring geometry “to life” but hands on activities like this are guaranteed to intrigue and inspire.

“In classroom or at home, ITSPHUN can be used to sharpen spatial visualization ability and explore geometric concepts such as length, area, angles, polygons, polyhedra, etc. in a fun and visually inspiring way. Counting strategies and combinatorial formulas can be introduced by counting faces, edges and vertices.”

ITSPHUN has won two Maker Faires Editor’s Choice awards and a Best in Show ribbon for Education. View a complete list of the company’s accomplishments on Kickstarter.

*If you would like to submit a product to be considered for our ‘Product of the Week’ post please e-mail us at info@3d-innovations.com with an image and/or website link and a product description. Thank you!

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3D Innovations is a full service 3D Engineering/Design company – from the 3D Design to a fully functional 3D Prototype & Product.

The National Science Foundation published a Q&A piece, Labor Day Q&A: Opportunities in STEM, and we found the information provided in this article to be direct, conscience and extremely informational for college students and parents. The answers are provided by Nimmi Kannankutty, Senior Advisor for NSF’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES).

Below are a few excerpts from the piece, but we highly encourage you to click on over to the National Science Foundation website and read the article in its entirety (Note: The article is a little long but definitely worth the time).

How many people are there in the STEM workforce?

If I focus on people with at least a bachelor’s degree, there are over 5 million people working in an S&E occupation and there are about 7 million people working in S&E-related occupations.

But there are other ways we can define the workforce, too. We can think about the workforce as employed people with certain types of degrees. From that perspective, there are about 15 million people with an S&E degree, and there are 6 million people with an S&E-related degree — this would include health degrees, S&E technical degrees, and science and math teacher education.

Another way to consider it is whether they need S&E expertise for their jobs. Among college graduates, for over 16 million, their job requires S&E expertise, and this includes people working in non-S&E jobs.

Students are making decisions right now about their majors and maybe their graduate studies. Are the STEM fields good ones for students to pursue?

There are many different pathways you can take with an S&E degree. For example, if you get an engineering degree, you may work as an engineer, as a science or math teacher, or you may be a manager of engineering projects at a consulting firm. S&E graduates continue to higher degrees within S&E, but they also go on to get graduate degrees in medicine, law or business.

An S&E degree does often lead to an S&E job, but it can also be used to pursue a career in other areas.

Is it harder for women to get jobs in STEM?

Women continue to remain underrepresented among those earning S&E degrees, as well as among those working in S&E occupations. While the share of women earning college degrees has risen to over 50 percent, men still earn the majority of S&E degrees.

Demographic changes in the workforce are also at play here. Because older scientists and engineers are disproportionately male, women are a lower percentage of the overall S&E workforce than among recent graduates, where there are a higher proportion of women.

Is it true that jobs are sitting empty for lack of qualified STEM workers?

Most of the data that we have on the S&E workforce is on the supply side of the equation: We know about the number of people earning degrees, and we know about the numbers who are employed.

We have relatively less information on the demand side of the equation. For example, we don’t have comprehensive measures of the skills, competencies or positions that employers need now, or in the future. We also do not have large nationally representative surveys that would help us say more empirically whether companies are not able to find the right people to fill STEM jobs.

Recent graduates with STEM education backgrounds have found themselves in a better than average job market. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the annual mean wage for a STEM job is $79,395 — nearly 71% higher than the national annual average wage across all occupations and industries. Over the past couple of decades, some cities in the U.S. have become more attractive to STEM graduates for a variety of reasons.

In today’s digital age balancing technology and the physical world is becoming more of a challenge for parents and educators. In recent years we have seen a movement in STEM education to bridge the gap between technology and hands-on involvement. A recent Kickstarter project, Printeer, not only bridges the gap but brings children to the forefront of the 3D printing movement. What makes Printeer perfect for the classroom or at home is the simplicity in which it takes to operate. This is an ideal K-12 educational tool!

Printeer is for today’s kids, tomorrow’s engineers & designers

Design and 3D print your own creations using an iPad. A delightful 3D printing experience for children and K-12 education.

Unlike other 3D printers, using Printeer doesn’t require advanced technical or engineering skills. For starters, you don’t need to learn CAD (computer aided design) software, a professional-grade tool that is required to generate the 3D designs used by other 3D printers.

Printeer design software is different in the following ways:

It runs on iPad, a platform most kids are more comfortable with than a PC.

It can be learned in about 30 seconds.

It doesn’t require any intermediate steps between design and 3D printing.

*If you would like to submit a product to be considered for our ‘Product of the Week’ post please e-mail us at info@3d-innovations.com with an image and/or website link and a product description. Thanks!

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3D Innovations is a full service 3D Engineering/Design company – from the 3D Design to a fully functional 3D Prototype & Product.

The 3D Academy division of our company is focused on sharing the wonderful world of engineering with children and inspiring them to continue their STEM education. We are always drawn to tools that make teaching engineering concepts more engaging and hands on for children …The KIBO robot does just that!

“KIBO is a robot kit specifically designed for young children aged 4-7 years old. It is different from any other kit out there because it appeals to both technically minded kids and those that connect more to arts and culture or physical activity. Young children learn by doing. Children build their own robot with KIBO, program it to do what they want, and decorate it. KIBO gives children the chance to make their ideas physical and tangible—exactly what their young minds and bodies need. And KIBO does all this without requiring screen time from PCs, tablets or smartphones.”

“Designed for open-ended play, KIBO lets children make almost anything – a character from a story, a carousel, a dancer, a race helicopter – anything that they can think of. The child creates a sequence of instructions (a program) using the wooden KIBO blocks. They scan the blocks with the KIBO body to tell the robot what to do. They press the button and the robot comes alive. With KIBO, young children can become programmers, engineers, designers, artists, dancers, choreographers and writers.”

*If you would like to submit a product to be considered for our ‘Product of the Week’ post please e-mail us at info@3d-innovations.com with an image and/or website link and a product description. Thanks!

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3D Innovations is a full service 3D Engineering/Design company – from the 3D Design to a fully functional 3D Prototype & Product.